A settlement constantly endeavors to make its
neighborhood realize that it belongs to the city as a whole, and can only
improve as the city improves.

--Jane Addams

The job of the organizer is to maneuver and
bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as the “dangerous
enemy.” The word “enemy” is sufficient to put the organizer on the side of the
people . . .

--Saul Alinsky

It is not coincidence that Chicago produced
two of the most important figures in community organizing of the twentieth
century: Jane Addams and Saul Alinsky (1909-1972). Chicago was a center of
social upheaval as exhibited by the Haymarket Riots of 1888, the Pullman Strike
of 1894, and the Race Riots of 1919 (as well as race riots in the 1940’s, 1950’s
and 1960’s). This city’s social unrest existed in dynamic relationship to ideas
about social change and reform fomented in Chicago as witnessed in the
settlement work of Addams’ Hull House, the socialist work of Eugene Debs’s
American Railway Union, the urban research and social theorizing of the “Chicago
School”[i],
and the Back of the Yards organization founded by Saul Alinsky. Addams was the
visible leader of one reform effort, the Social Settlement Movement, and
Alinsky’s name became synonymous with the community organizing movement. As
activist Heather Booth describes, “Alinsky is to community organizing as Freud
is to psychoanalysis.”[ii]
In this article, I will challenge the notion that the genealogy and influence of
community organizing originates with Alinsky, and suggest that the innovation of
Jane Addams’ work and philosophy are being overlooked. The Settlement Movement
has been characterized as well meaning, but paternalistic and patronizing[iii],
while the Community Organizing movement is described as a grass roots effort
that was tough minded and effective.[iv]
Alinsky facilitated the distinction between the two movements by frequently
criticizing the methods of the Settlement workers. This chapter focuses on the
comparative community organizing philosophies of Addams and Alinsky. I wish to
dispel some of the misconceptions about the differences between the two leaders
while highlighting other crucial dichotomies. I claim that although Addams and
Alinsky differ in regard to how to leverage power and social vision, in many
ways Alinsky (through the Chicago school) is an unwitting protégé of Addams when
it comes to social epistemology and participative democracy.

The Addams’ Model of Community Organizing

In the late 19th century and
early 20th century, Addams authored a series of articles that served
to define the social settlement movement and establish Addams as the
spokesperson for the movement. Addams viewed social settlements as experiments
in learning that cut across culture and class: “Hull-House
endeavors to make social intercourse express the growing sense of the economic
unity of society, and may be described as an effort to add the social function
to democracy.”[v]Her ultimate goal was social advancement, and she felt this was only
possible if citizens were highly invested in one another. This “social
democracy” required what she described as “sympathetic knowledge” or a duty to
learn about others in society, no matter how unfamiliar those others were, with
an openness to caring for and acting on behalf of those others. For Addams,
sympathetic knowledge is the connective understanding necessary for a robust
democracy.[vi]
Social settlements were physical manifestations of her democratic philosophy.
The settlement was a multifaceted educational conduit that existed to facilitate
social knowledge across boundaries of identity such as class and culture. Those
in the neighborhood had an opportunity to learn about one another as well as
about how to navigate and succeed in the United States through settlement
programs. Simultaneously, settlement workers learned from the various cultures
around them. Addams reflected upon and thematized what she learned through her
writing and speeches thus allowing those not involved in settlements to learn
about the experiences as well. The social settlements were intentionally not
charity organizations and Addams was quick to criticize that label: “I am always
sorry to have Hull House regarded as philanthropy.”[vii]Starting from the feminist ontological
view that humans are fundamentally connected in a web of relationships rather
than atomistic agents, the social settlements facilitated self sufficiency by
supporting community ties and promoting life long learning. Addams analogized
social settlements as good neighbors, and as such, modeled the behavior of
members in a healthy democracy. Good neighbors listen carefully, respect
community members, and respond to their needs. If garbage needed to be
collected, the settlement workers found a way to get it picked up. If working
parents needed day care, the settlement workers organized one.

One example of Addams’ concern for women and
the development of self sufficiency in the neighborhood can be seen in the
creation of the Jane Club, described in Twenty Years at Hull-House. At a
time when collective bargaining did not enjoy the legal protections that it does
today, Addams observed that single women labor union members were particularly
vulnerable when it came to periods of unemployment created by strikes or
lockouts. During labors actions single working women could no longer afford
rent money. Such vulnerability reduced the power of the bargaining unit and the
influence of women within that unit. Collaborating with labor leaders such as
Mary Kenney, Addams established a workingwoman’s cooperative, subsequently named
the Jane Club. This cooperative ensured that all members’ rent was paid in the
event of labor interruptions. Addams secured funding to build housing for the
Jane Club, but it operated as an independent entity as described in the
Hull-House Year Book (1934): “The club has been, from the beginning,
self-governing, the officers being elected by the members from their own
number.”[viii]
This report came after the Jane Club’s 27th year of continuous
operation. The Jane Club allowed individual members to flourish through the
power of communal enterprise. Addams’ organizational vision made this project
possible.

As seen in the example of the Jane Club,
Addams’ philosophy of community organizing was responsive, anti-ideological,
fluid, and methodologically anti-antagonistic. Most of all, Hull House listened
to the community and responding to needs. It was non-ideological in that Hull
House did not affiliate with any particular group. Although socialists and
anarchists were invited to speak at Hull House, there was no affiliation. Many
residents held religious beliefs, but no settlement ties to organized religion
were made. Furthermore, Addams’ lack of ideology meant that she was open to
many different paths to achieving success. For example, she was willing to
collaborate with government agencies in order to advance societal interests.
Finally, Addams’ philosophy of community organizing was anti-antagonistic, which
should not be confused with being nonconfrontational. On many occasions, Addams
confronted entrenched others in her struggles to advance the interests of the
neighborhood. She did so without engaging in personal rancor. For example, on
three occasions she organized unsuccessful opposition campaigns to unseat the
local corrupt alderman, Johnny Powers. However, Addams avoided personal
antagonism. Although disagreeing with Powers’ backroom deals and cronyism, she
was objective enough to admire his ability to form close ties with the
community.[ix]
She refused to villainize anyone, although she was not afraid of pointing out
their errors. In her account of the Pullman Strike, she delineates the mistakes
in leadership that George Pullman made including a lack of connection to his
workers and a blind paternalism.[x]
Despite her support for labor organizing, she also recounted the errors of the
workers. Pullman was not characterized as inherently evil, but rather as an all
too human gone astray. In community organizing, Addams attempted to keep all
people in the conversation and avoided alienating individuals through
unnecessary personal antagonism.

In summary, Addams’ community organizing
supported her political philosophy which emphasized social democracy, widespread
participation, and the development of connected/sympathetic knowledge. Although
Addams’ philosophy came alive through the work of Hull House, it did not reflect
the entire settlement movement. The Settlement Movement was a very disparate
amalgamation of efforts. The over 400 settlements that existed at the
movement’s peak had no formal ties to one another. For example, although Hull
House avoided religious affiliation, many other settlement communities overtly
embraced religion.[xi]
The movement also underwent drastic changes through its decline in the 1930’s;
the largest of which being the use of professional social workers. After World
War I, fewer volunteers were forthcoming resulting in the settlements employing
more contracted professionals who did not reside at the settlement. These
settlements became increasingly bureaucratic and institutionalized and thus less
like the fluid and flat Hull House that Addams had managed. Addams viewed
proximal relations as paramount. She overcame her outsider status in the Hull
House neighborhood by treating her neighbors with dignity and respect, as well
as living in the area for almost 50 years. Subsequent settlement workers had
more specialized education, as described by Judith Ann Trolander: “In place of
residents, the post-World War II settlement house hired increasing numbers of
M.S.W.s, changed its methods and image, enlarged its professional organizations,
and attracted different kinds of people as settlement house works.
Professionalization was the underlying cause of these changes.”[xii]
These professional social workers were more clearly marked as outsiders to the
community. Settlement houses continued to work for the improvement of
impoverished communities, but the philosophy of community organizing moved away
from Addams’ vision of a highly connected and engaged good neighbor. I mention
this evolution because the settlement movement that Alinsky confronted and
criticized was not the same one that Addams had created in the early decades at
Hull House. Karl Marx once famously declared, “I am not a Marxist” in response
to the many unsavory manifestations of his work. If Addams were to confront the
professionalized settlement movement of the latter half of the 20th
century, she might similarly declare, “I am not a settlement worker.”

The Alinsky Model of Community Organizing

Addams (with Ellen Gates Starr) opened Hull
House in 1889 in West Chicago on Halstead Street. A half-century later, in
1939, Saul Alinsky and Joseph Meeghan organized the Back of the Yards community
located behind Chicago’s Union Stock Yards, the subject of Upton Sinclair’s
The Jungle. As early as 1906, Addams described the “sickening stench and
scum” in the Chicago stock yards as “unendurable.”[xiii]
The neighborhood that Alinsky confronted was largely foreign born, suffered from
high rates of unemployment, and resided amidst the environmental nightmare of
the stockyards including its pervasive putrid odor. Alinsky led the formation
of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC), a confederation of
numerous local groups, brought together to collectively address issues in the
neighborhood. Many of the local ethnic communities were at odds with one
another, but Alinsky and Meeghan negotiated a major public meeting where
churches, fraternal clubs, athletic clubs, local businesses, and labor unions
were represented. Alinsky did a great deal of behind the scenes work to bring
the parties together, and he coordinated a highly effective campaign for the
event.. The local newspapers almost immediately hailed Alinsky as the architect
of a new movement for community justice.[xiv]
The Alinsky led coalition successfully leveraged public outrage to bring
expanded city services and political power to the Back of the Yards community.
This effort launched his 35 year career in community organizing that found him
replicating the model in other beleaguered urban areas through the Industrial
Area Foundation (IAF). In 1940, after securing funding from philanthropist
Marshall Field and progressive Catholics in Chicago, Alinsky created the IAF to
systematize his community organizing efforts. The IAF took the Alinsky method
to impoverished areas in Baltimore, Detroit, Little Rock, Rochester, San
Antonio, and Toledo. Meeghan stayed to work in the BYNC while Alinsky moved
from battleground to battleground.

Alinsky’s philosophy of community
organizing is based on power relations. He built grassroots organizations that
democratically leverage power to address social inequities. It begins with
understanding the community. Alinsky, drawing upon his roots in social science,
advocates social research to thoroughly understand a neighborhood and its
problems. As Robert Bailey Jr. describes, “organizers seek to mobilize a
community’s residents to attack problems affecting their community.”[xv]
Social research is followed by the identification and development of local
leadership that Alinsky describes as “native” or “indigenous” leadership.[xvi]
Alinsky views contacting and fostering native leadership as crucial to the
process of understanding the neighborhood and rallying the community around a
cause. Professional organizers provide the skills, but the community gains its
power through participation and coordination in a manner analogous to labor
union organizing. Alinsky’s approach is to create an overarching “community
organization” made up of representatives of local groups. Invitations are
extended to these community groups rather than individuals. The strategy is one
of strength in numbers that parallels the solidarity crucial for effective
collective bargaining. Ultimately, Alinsky views community organizing as a
power struggle to gain rights and privileges for marginalized communities: “The
present power age denies and evaluates everything in terms of power. To this
common and accepted view, the field of organization has been no exception. It
is universally assumed that the function of a People’s Organization is similar
to that of any other kind of organization, which is to become so strong, so
powerful, that it can achieve its ends.”[xvii]
For Alinsky, the operant metaphor for community organizing is that of a battle
or game to be won.

The BYNC applied Alinsky’s organizing
philosophy successfully to bring tangible and intangible benefits to the
community.[xviii]
Tangible benefits included improved services to the neighborhood, and the
intangible benefits included a new sense of pride. One incident that reveals
how Alinsky valorized the leveraging of power occurred in 1944. The event also
serves as contrasting Alinsky’s approach with that of Addams. An opportunity
arose to bring the Infant Welfare Society’s (a children’s health clinic) branch
station to the Back of the Yards community. Two local organizations vied to
house the station: BYNC and the University of Chicago Settlement. To win the
battle, Alinsky told the Infant Welfare Society’s president that if the
University of Chicago Settlement housed the infant station, the priests of the
largely Catholic neighborhood would initiate a boycott from the pulpit. Alinsky
viewed this conflict as an opportunity to gain status for BYNC as the voice of
the community and he was determined not to lose. He escalated the antagonism by
accusing the Chicago Settlement of being anti-Catholic because it gave out birth
control information. Alinsky made this accusation despite his own pro birth
control beliefs.[xix]
In a public struggle, he backed the Chicago Settlement into a corner and
rebuffed their efforts at conciliation until it was clear that BYNC was
victorious. Alinsky had once again demonstrated how effective his methods
were. As a result of the confrontation, the Chicago Settlement never fully
regained its stature in the community.[xx]
The BYNC used its newfound status to fight for increasing benefits for the
community.

Common Themes

Superficially, Addams and Alinsky appear to
have very different organizing philosophies. However, a delineation between
style and philosophical commitments reveals more commonality than usually
attributed. Part of the challenge of making this separation is that Alinsky and
members of his organization intentionally and forcefully depict themselves as
differing strongly from social settlements. Sidney Hyman, whose sister had been
a resident of Hull House, became an activist for Alinsky in the BYNC. In a 1983
interview describing his enthusiasm for working with Alinsky, Hyman contrasts
Addams’ philosophy with that of Alinsky’s:

The good Episcopalian ladies with the
good-bad conscience did everything for Hull House. These were the so-called
hellfare workers, the Lady Bountifuls. Going to work for Jane Addams at
Hull-House was a romantic thing to do for a young, sensitive woman. [Their noble
purpose was] to help, but it was always the Lady Bountifuls who were doing
the helping. Now Saul comes along and turns it around and sort of sets the
whole Hull-House idea on its head. He says he doesn’t want the hellfare worker,
he doesn’t want the Lady Bountiful; he wants people to help themselves and
that became a very romantic idea. A lot of people wanted to get it on that
one, just like an earlier generation a lot of people wanted to get in on the
Hull-House idea.[xxi]

Hyman makes the error of associating Addams
with unreflective charity work; however, the real target of his critique should
have been what the settlements evolved into during the post-Addams era rather
than Addams’ philosophy. Addams would likely be aghast at such an association
with charity work because she vehemently contended that settlements were
intended to facilitate education and connection, not charity. In Democracy
and Social Ethics, Addams devotes an entire chapter to criticizing well
meaning, but ineffective charity workers who fail to understand the communities
that they attempt to serve. Addams’ criticism of charity workers is strikingly
similar to Hyman and Alinsky’s criticism of social settlement workers. Addams
challenges the class structure of charity, for example, when she criticizes the
charity worker who judges the cleanliness of the neighborhood home “over against
her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing only attained through
status.”[xxii]
The notion that Addams stood for charity in opposition to Alinsky who stood for
collective action is not borne out by historical examination. It can be
demonstrated that Addams and Alinsky share much in terms of their philosophy of
community organizing, with some important exceptions.

Addams and Alinsky shared a concern for
listening and learning the needs of the community employing both quantitative
and qualitative means to gain perspective. When asked how to organize people,
Alinsky responds, “You find out what they care about, what they are worried
about, and you organize them around these issues.”[xxiii]
Addams began her settlement with the simple plan of being a good neighbor, but
within 5 years of opening Hull House, she and her cohort were engaging in
systematic research to understand the community. In 1895, Addams co-authored
Hull-House Maps and Papers, a groundbreaking social study on the ethnicity
and conditions surrounding the settlement. Historian Kathryn Kish Sklar refers
to this study as “the single most important work by American women social
scientists before 1900.”[xxiv]
In the introduction, Addams makes it clear that Hull-House Maps and Papers,
is not in the interest of science, but part of a connection to the community
that will serve to facilitate progress:

The residents of Hull-House offer these maps
and papers to the public, not as exhaustive treatises, but as recorded
observations, which may possibly be of value, because they are immediate, and
the result of long acquaintance. All the writers have been in actual residence
in Hull-House, some of them for five years; their energies however, have been
chiefly directed not towards sociological investigation, but to constructive
work.”[xxv]

In this manner, both Addams and Alinsky
demonstrated a respect for the knowledge generated by social science and the
scientific method, and each understood the need for presence and responsiveness
beyond quantitative analysis.

Both Alinsky and Addams advocated for the
active participation of community members in the organizing of social efforts.
Addams recognized that when existing social institutions do not provide a
reasonable means for citizen participation, those citizens will organize to
resist. For example, according to Addams, an unresponsive government, “forces
the most patriotic citizens to ignore the Government and to embody their
scruples and hopes of progress in voluntary organizations.”[xxvi]
Hull House afforded numerous opportunities for local groups to organize,
particularly as clubs or labor unions. The settlement acted as an incubator for
such groups providing meeting space and expertise without formal affiliations.
Similarly, Alinsky viewed his organizations as fully democratic: “This kind of
organization can be built only if people are working together for real,
attainable objectives.”[xxvii]
Alinsky’s community groups were democratic to the point that he regretted some
of the directions chosen by local groups he helped found.[xxviii]

Both Addams and Alinsky share a commitment to
giving the disenfranchised a voice. Addams may have held paternalistic ideas
when she opened Hull House, but she soon realized that the community needed to
speak for themselves: “The residents at Hull House find in themselves a
constantly increasing tendency to consult their neighbors on the advisability of
each new undertaking.”[xxix]
Addams came to view the active participation of the marginalized as essential to
the success of the settlement. For Addams, settlements “draw into participation
in our culture large numbers of persons who would otherwise have to remain
outside.”[xxx]
In the same way, Alinsky is very concerned that the United States is facing a
crisis of disenfranchisement: “It is a grave situation when a people resign
their citizenship or when a resident of a great city, though he may desire to
take a hand, lacks the means to participate.”[xxxi]
The community organizations provided citizens with a means to reengage
themselves with political processes. In this trajectory, Alinsky and Addams
held an expansive view of democracy that entailed a citizen’s duty for active
involvement. Correspondingly, both had an abiding faith in humanity. Alinsky
describes the community organizer as having “a complete commitment to the belief
that if people have the power, the opportunity to act, in the long run they
will, most of the time, reach the right decisions.”[xxxii]

The resonance between the social
philosophies of Addams and Alinsky is not surprising if the Chicago School
connection is taken into account. Addams and Hull House helped shape the
sociology department of the University of Chicago, which in turn influenced
Alinsky’s approach to community organizing. Mary Jo Deegan documents the strong
ties between Addams and the early sociologists of the Chicago School: George
Herbert Mead and William I. Thomas. During this early period, the sociologists
collaborated with Addams often, and were frequent visitors to Hull House, just
as Addams visited and lectured at the University of Chicago. The academics
hailed the publication of Hull House Maps and Papers as a landmark work
in urban sociology. The next generation of sociologists, including Robert Ezra
Parks and Ernest W. Burgess were also interested in social settlements, but were
more concerned with professionalizing the discipline of sociology in a manner
that distanced itself from social work. An implicit gender divide emerged, as
social workers were largely female and the academic sociologists were almost
exclusively male. Alinsky attended the University of Chicago from 1926 to 1932
by which time most of the first generation of sociologists had left. Park and
Burgess likely mentioned Addams only sparingly in the classroom, but this does
not diminish her influence upon them. As Lawrence J. Engel describes, “Although
these male sociologists failed to acknowledge the significance of Addams, their
work was nevertheless influenced by Hull House: its community-mapping
techniques, its emphasis upon the social dimensions of democratic neighborhood
life, and its institutional relationships within the community (labor churches,
city agencies, etc.).”[xxxiii]
Even though Alinsky was loath to credit his academic roots in forming his
philosophy of community organizing, Engel identifies clear evidence of
connection. Equally compelling is Deegan’s evidence for Addams influencing the
Chicago School. This genealogy places Addams as an indirect and unacknowledged
mentor of Alinsky and explains much of their philosophical convergence.

Divergence

Where Addams and Alinsky differed was in
methodology and long-range vision. Addams emphasized cooperation devoid of
antagonism. Her interest was in widening the circle of those actively engaged
in any particular issue and thus she avoided unnecessary alienation. Addams
believed in the power of rational argument to sway the views of her opponents.
She was not naïve about conflict and recognized that it occurred, but she had
faith in the ability of people to make common cause. Addams recognized the role
of power and the ability Hull House had to leverage its power. For example,
Addams describes one function of the social settlement as “big brother whose
mere presence on the play ground protects the little ones from bullies.”[xxxiv]
Nevertheless, their rhetorical methods diverged widely. Addams was guarded in
her remarks in order to keep people engaged in the conversation. Alinsky was
flamboyantly bombastic to intentionally provoke opponents. For example, in
describing the difference between social workers and his organizers, Alinsky
declared, “they organize to get rid of four-legged rats and stop there; we
organize to get rid of four-legged rats so we can get on to removing two-legged
rats.”[xxxv]
He enjoyed a good battle and he particularly enjoyed winning. Alinsky’s
organizations viewed each effort at social justice as a contest: “we are
concerned with how to create mass organization to seize power and give it to the
people.”[xxxvi]
Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals maintains numerous war metaphors describing
community organizing as “warfare” with the “enemy” requiring “tactics” to gain
and redistribute power. Accordingly, Alinsky’s abrasiveness elicited numerous
critics. Addams had her detractors as well, but they were for the positions
that she took, not because of her rhetorical demeanor.

Methodology is not the only difference
between the two. Perhaps more substantially, Addams and Alinsky had different
approaches to the scope and long-range goals of community organizing. Alinsky
was vague about the broad social changes he was attempting to institute and made
little effort to thematizing across the individual battles for social justice
that he was waging. Joseph Heathcott claims that Alinsky’s “lack of broader
political vision” makes his philosophy of community organizing less serviceable
in an environment where large stable organizational constituencies such as
unions and churches are not there to support his planned confrontations. By
contrast, Addams viewed social progress as the overarching goal for which all
efforts are connected. For example, Addams found no contradiction in arguing
for labor rights at the local level and advocating for peace at the
international level. Both advanced the cause of social democracy. For Addams,
war was regressive and wasteful and thus a threat to society. The success of
labor unions brought greater quality of work life for all citizens and was thus
a boon to society. Addams’ philosophy also envisioned ongoing efforts at
community organizing. For Addams, the social settlements were intended to be
lasting good neighbors. She led the effort to convert the settlement workers’
outsider status to insider status by living in proximity and reciprocity with
oppressed peoples. Alinsky’s organizations developed leadership talent within
the community, and intended it to be strong enough to last, but there was no
effort at a long-term presence by the organizer. Once the community organized,
it was on its own with occasional consulting from the outside. These
differences in method and vision cannot be directly correlated to success. Both
Addams and Alinsky had their successes, and their failures.

An interesting example of the stylistic
difference between Addams and Alinsky has to do with their approach to higher
education. They both were college educated and benefited tremendously from the
skills, knowledge, and mentors of their academic experience. Both found fault
with abstract scholarship that found no basis in social advancement. Alinsky is
explicit, “I never appealed to people based on abstract values.”[xxxvii]
Addams also recognizes the limitations of abstract ideals. When it came to
organizing social efforts around an issue such as prostitution or child labor,
Addams thought it was crucial to use tangible examples that resonated with the
audience in order to fuel interest and passion for the subject. Nevertheless,
Addams maintained a commitment to scholarly reflection to help characterize and
give meaning to social issues. In regard to a holistic notion of peace that was
more than the absence of war and required local and international effort, Addams
proposed that, “it requires the philosopher to unify these spiritual efforts of
the common man into the internationalism of good will.”[xxxviii]
Addams did have her criticism of scholarship that became too academic, as
reflected in her falling out with the University of Chicago. Comparatively,
Alinsky appears almost bitter in his anti-intellectual tirades. In a 1965
interview, Alinsky muses, “In college I took a lot of sociology courses too, but
I can’t say they made a deep impression on me. . . . Today the University of
Chicago sociology department is just a tribe of head counters.”[xxxix]
The professionalized social settlement workers of the era was one of the
educated groups that Alinsky railed against, referring to their training as
“formalized garbage they learned in school.”[xl]

Gender Mapping

Ultimately, Alinsky and his followers
emphasize that they were engaging in a new brand of community organizing. Note
that Alinsky reveled in the word “radical.” Alinsky’s two most important works
are Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals. Sanford D.
Horwitt’s biography of Alinsky is titled Let Them Call Me Radical, and
Marion K. Sanders published interview with Alinsky is titled The Professional
Radical. Alinsky defines a radical as, “that unique person who actually
believes what he says. He is that person to whom the common good is the
greatest personal value. He is that person who genuinely and completely
believes in mankind. The radical is so completely identified with mankind that
he personally shares the pain, the injustices, and the sufferings of all his
fell men.”[xli]
Despite this fixation with the term, was Alinsky a radical? Alinsky advocated
for social reform and change using tactics designed to provoke and gain
attention, but he did not question fundamental institutions of society such as
capitalism. By many standards, including those of feminist theorists, Alinsky
is a mild radical at best. Sociologists Donald C. Reitzes and Dietrick C.
Reitzes claim that despite self description to the contrary, Alinsky’s
philosophy of community organizing is not “radical and revolutionary.”[xlii]
During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee held dialogues with Alinsky and his organizers, but they
became frustrated because he was only advocating reform. Mike Miller, who
worked for both SNCC and later an Alinsky organization, describes: “A common
label attached to Alinsky was that he was only ‘local,’ failing to understand
that major decisions were made at a national level.”[xliii]
I suggest that Alinsky was using the term “radical” not in the sense of
challenging existing institutions and structures, but as describing a curmudgeon
with integrity. Furthermore, the term is clearly masculine in Alinsky’s mind.
For Alinsky, a radical is a man who does not use methods traditionally described
as “feminine.” Furthermore, all of Alinsky’s examples of radicals—John P.
Altgeld, Edward Bellamy, John Brown, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Henry
Lloyd, Horace Mann, Thomas Paine, Upton Sinclair, and Lincoln Steffens--are
male.

What is intriguing about the difference in
methodology between Addams and Alinsky is how well it maps onto gender
stereotypes. Addams was cooperative and caring in fostering life-long learning
and relationships. Alinsky was competitive and abrasive in trying to achieve
victories in the name of social justice. Alinsky’s organizing did not exclude
women, but its demands and style favored men, and this was borne out
demographically.[xliv]
Kenneth Boulding describes Alinsky’s community organizing as requiring,
“behavior more typically identified as male; activism, aggression, self
assertion, and organizing more frequently associated with the ‘managerial sex.’”[xlv]
Perhaps not surprisingly, the “masculine” approach has been considered realistic
and efficacious while the “feminine” approach has been thought of as naïve and
simplistic. Accordingly, for decades Alinsky has been assigned the title of
“father of community organizing,” while Addams’ community organizing legacy
through social settlements has been overshadowed. Until recently, Addams has
been excluded from serious consideration in philosophy and sociology[xlvi]
as well as activism/community organizing/radicalism. Given the breadth of her
social theorizing, the volume of her publications, her impact on local
communities and international policies and institutions, one has to wonder if
implicit sexism is not at the heart of her exclusion.

Susan Stall and Randy Stoecker authored one
of the few comparative studies of gender and community organizing. They compare
the “Alinsky approach” to a “women-centered approach” in community organizing,
thus Addams is not a direct target of comparison, but she is a leading figure in
the women-centered approach. This insightful and comprehensive study divides
the two approaches along a public/private sphere split. According to Stall and
Stoecker, Alinsky’s methods assume working within the public sphere while a
women-centered approach must traverse the private to the public. The
assumptions of the two approaches are very different with the Alinsky model
assuming the self-interested agent and the women-centered approach assuming a
caring model. Accordingly, Alinsky’s organizers must find the issues that
resonate with people’s individual self interest. The women-centered model seeks
to foster connections among community members to facilitate caring. Although
this is a useful and well-documented analysis, a few of the assumptions of Stall
and Stoecker’s discussion appear to belie the gender biases that they wished to
highlight. Comparing an individual’s community organizing approach (Alinsky’s)
to an amalgamation of approaches (women-centered) appears unbalanced. Stall and
Stoecker claim, “unlike the Alinsky model, the women centered model of community
organizing cannot be attributed to a single person or movement.”[xlvii]
The implication of this statement is that Alinsky is solely responsible for his
philosophy of community organizing: the myth of the heroic male. Such a
decontextualized claim ignores Alinsky’s training and acknowledged mentors such
as labor organizer, John L. Lewis, as well as the aforementioned Park and
Burgess. Furthermore, such an approach assumes that what Alinsky did was
novel. His tactics may have been unique, but much of his philosophy, a social
epistemology of participative and proximal relations, can be found in Addams’
theories of the settlement movement. Stall and Stoecker also seem to implicitly
denigrate the ability of a women-centered approach to structure large-scale
projects: “The presence, and partial restriction, of women in the private
sphere leads the women-centered organizing model to emphasize a very different
organizing process formed around creating an ideal private-sphere-like setting
rather than a large public sphere organization.”[xlviii]
Just because women were restricted from the public sphere did not mean that they
did not enter or manipulate it. Addams’ Hull House was very much an entrée into
the public sphere that Addams and her cohort leveraged to become more widely
influential. For example, Robyn Muncy documents how Hull House residents were
responsible for creating the Women’s Bureau, the first government agency headed
by a woman, longtime Hull House resident Julia Lathrop. The Women’s Bureau was
not only a women-centered organization, but it integrated numerous feminist
principles of operation.[xlix]
To be fair, Stall and Stoecker are not alone in assuming the primacy of
Alinsky’s community organizing, but it is intriguing that gender bias runs so
deep that even those attending to it cannot escape it.[l]

Alinsky accomplished a great deal in his
lifetime and modern day activists do well to study his philosophy and methods,
but his legacy is perhaps generally overstated and inflated to match his
larger-than-life personality. Judith Ann Trolander notes that Alinsky was a
powerful spokesperson for community organizing and a brilliant self promoter,
which served to advance his cause.[li]
Perhaps Alinsky influenced the extent of his own legacy.

Conclusion: Addams as a Model of Feminist
Community Organizing

Marie Weil lists various United States
social movements with significant female leadership, and no one is associated
with more movements than Addams. Despite this delineation, Weil falls prey to
gender perceptions, claiming:

Despite a rich and proud heritage of female
organizers and movement leaders, the field of community organization, in both
its teaching models and its major exponents, have been a male-dominated
preserve, where, even though values are expressed in terms of participatory
democracy, much of the focus within the dominant practice methods has been
nonsupportive or antithetical to feminism. Strategies have largely been based
on “macho-power” models, manipulativeness, and zero-sum gamesmanship.[lii]

I would qualify Weil’s largely accurate
description by suggesting not that the field has been male dominated, but that
the portrayal of it has been. Much like Alinsky’s effort to depict himself as
using necessary masculine methods over and against inferior feminine methods,
history has masked the successful communitarian and cooperative efforts of women
organizers as anachronistic. In this manner, feminist community organizing is
hidden behind the acclaim heaped upon male organizing. The feminist process of
reassessing given historical truths reveals more grassroots organizing than is
commonly attributed.

Addams develops a feminist philosophy of
community organizing emphasizing proximal relations and sympathetic knowledge
that in some ways resonates more with modern feminist sensibilities than it did
with first or second wave feminism. In 1990, Patricia Yancey Martin explored
the dimensions of a feminist organization. She offered numerous definitions one
of which is that a feminist organization is “pro-woman, political, and socially
transformational.”[liii]
Addams’ approach to community organizing was inclusive, providing new and unique
opportunities to empower women including athletic expression, reproductive
information dissemination, and economic independence. Hull House residents
often found themselves engaged in political conflicts. Ultimately, it was a
women-centered community that modeled what women could accomplish in the public
sphere. This form of community organizing has a modern quality in its fluidity
and cosmopolitanism, and yet sought to create lasting social relationships.
Addams’ settlement community was not bogged down in layers of bureaucracy or
institutional rules and was therefore capable of responding quickly to the needs
of the neighborhood. Addams embraced diversity in a manner ahead of her era.
She believed cultural and intellectual pluralism were crucial for the success of
a democracy. Finally, Addams approach to community organizing supported the
notion of setting down lasting roots in the community to provide ongoing
service. This quality might particularly appeal to modern feminists in a world
dominated by truncated social transactions and technology that facilitates long
distance interactions. Hull House, and Addams reflections upon society and
social settlements, remain a fascinating example of feminist community
organizing that has not been fully mined for its ongoing significance.

[i]
The Chicago School is associated with scholars at the University of
Chicago in the very late 19th century and early 20th
century in the fields of economics, philosophy, psychology, religion,
and sociology; however, the meaning of the term has evolved differently
in the various disciplines. Addams was associated with early influential
members of the Chicago School including philosophers John Dewey and
George Herbert Mead while later sociologists, Robert Ezra Park and
Ernest W. Burgess, influenced Alinsky.

[ii]
Robert A. Slayton, Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 198.

[xii]
Judith Ann Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change: From the
Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to the Present
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 31-2.

[xiii]
Addams identifies the problems in the Chicago Stock Yards, as a failure
of the local government to adhere to the will of the local inhabitants,
foreshadowing what Alinsky would confront over 30 years later. Jane
Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace (Urbana, University of Illinois
Press, 2007), 58.

[xxiv]
Kathryn Kish Sklar, “Hull-House Maps and Papers: Social Science
as Women’s Work in the 1890’s” in ed. Helene Silverberg, Gender and
American Social Science: The Formative Years, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998), 127.

[xxv]
Jane Addams, “Prefatory Note” in Hull-House Maps and Papers: A
Presentation of Nationalities an Wages in a Congested District of
Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of
the Social Conditions, Residents of Hull House, (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2007), 45.

[xlvi]
The pioneering work of Mary Jo Deegan and Charlene Haddock Seigfried has
asserted Addams intellectual significance in sociology and philosophy
respectively. Deegan, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School;
and Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Pragmatism and Feminism:
Reweaving the Social Fabric (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996).